Outside In Banking

In recent years, the definition of a brand as a promise has dominated all others.  I can understand why.  It’s easy to understand, it sounds manageable, and it terminates any further need for exploration.

In other words, it’s convenient.  Which is a long way from saying it works.

Bank of America, for example, can make all the promises they like, but few people are going to believe them.  You might say it’s because they’re not delivering on their promises.  Fair enough.  But is that all there is to it?

I believe it’s because their brand carries meaning that overrides their promises.

One obvious current meaning is that, to much of the general public, the BofA brand represents unbridled greed.  The myth goes something like this:  “They caused the recession.  Regardless, we bailed them out.  Then they put the money in their own pockets instead of using it to help the economy.”

It doesn’t matter if the myth is true or not.  It constricts the power of any promise BofA can make.  This is a big, big problem, and it’s going to require a lot more than “reputation management.”  It’s going to require the creation of a whole new brand meaning—a whole new mythology.

Not quite as convenient as making promises, is it?

To demonstrate the kind of work that needs to be done, let’s look outside the banking industry at the new Domino’s Pizza campaign.  Over the years, the Domino’s brand had come to represent poor quality, and—by extension—doing the bare minimum, and simply not caring.  Here’s what Domino’s did about it:

The campaign shows that Domino’s is not only willing to face reality, but to be transparent about it.  Not only willing to rise to the challenge, but to be excited about it.  Finally—and this is the genius part—to be openly proud of what they’ve accomplished.

Talk about a change in meaning—this is a near-perfect execution of the hero’s myth:

This new meaning is what makes the product improvements—the promise—credible.  Without meaning, the promise would just be another “new and improved’ claim.  With it, the promise has real power.

And the moral of the story?  Don’t let convenience limit your brand.  Meaning is where the action is.

I’ll have more to say on brand meaning in a future post.